Mikheil Saakashvili California Dreamin’ about Odessa's Police

The US will prime the pump to help fix Ukraine’s corruption-sodden Odessa oblast, now run by former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, and is looking to California to rev things up a little. The Golden State’s highway police will be coming to Odessa to help create a new generation of cops, meant to replace the legendarily payola-prone, post-Soviet police.

The plans were announced jointly on July 6 by US Ambassador to Kyiv Geoffrey Pyatt and Odessa Governor Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been tasked with a break-it-or-make-it reform mission in struggling Ukraine.

In describing the initiative, Ambassador Pyatt claimed that Ukraine faces two battles: “One is the war with Russia…The other is the war against corruption, the war for the reform, the war to move Ukraine towards the standards of modern European democracy that the Ukrainian people have sought,.” Odessa is the frontline for that second war, he added.